Now I need a program to reproduce the folder structure. Copy the directory structure of the original folder. I think i've seen or have something like that. I will comment.

I observed the behaviour of this wonderful program : short2real , and the initial folder only contains other real folders, so do nothing. Over the rest of folders acts one by one interacting with the user to transform file shortcuts and folder shortcuts to real files and real folders.

I have to test the behaviour under hard circunstances like more deeper shortcuts or cycle shortcuts.

Perhaps I can propose a better feature of this program, but from now is very useful.

Here's a version that gives you the option of recursive copying, replicating the original folder tree in the destination. That is, the original folder tree of the directory with the shortcuts not the folder tree of the directories with the real files/folders.

(this is only an introduction). Your splendid codesnack is finished at the above state. By the way. I am looking for a sort of director file with universal shortcuts or something near that.

I try to explain the best I can. In the main original folder I use by example (a document word xp) with links (hyperlinks) . I suppose i will lose those links when move the .doc document to the new folder. And obviously sure when I move the word document to a cd/dvd/usb/external hard drive.

I use from many years ago a CRM Goldmine 5.5 that have the possibility to offer alternativas paths when an original link is not found.

Windows Shortcut transformation

I don't know the exact concept behing : universal shortcut. Perhaps have other utilities like explore other hard disk when the link is not found in the first. Or a desktop shortcut tha may vary according the external disk you have connected.

When me like a little ant have to link several hundreds of linked files revised each time I move the word document is a tedious task.

The program only works on shortcuts, if a folder has no shortcuts in it then it won't be replicated in the destination because it was empty.

I think you might have to do what I suggested back here so I know exactly what the before and after is supposed to look like.

OK, found a bug that was turning folders into files, (kind of like wine into water ), so that will fix that problem. However, it still won't recreate folders that are empty, (no shortcut in them), because it only works on shortcuts.

* CloneSpy: GUI dedupe utility that can (among other things) replace duplicate files with shortcuts or hard links. * Dupemerge: CLI utility that searches for identical files on a logical drive and creates hard links among those files. (via Anthony Frazier) * Duplicate File Hard Linker (DFHL): Open source CLI tool that replaces duplicate files with hard links. Byte-per-byte comparison ensures only identical files are hard linked. * Finddupe: Open source CLI tool for detecting, deleting, or hard linking duplicate files. Can also list all hardlinked files on a given volume (similar to Microsoft's Hlscan.exe). Finddupe computes a hash based on the first 32k of a file, only checking entire file if there is a match.

A hard link is a folder entry for a file regardless of where the actual file data exists on that volume. Every file is considered to have at least one hard link. On NTFS volumes, each file can have multiple hard links; therefore, a single file can be displayed in many folders (or even in the same folder with different names). Because all of the links reference the same file, programs can open any of the links and modify the file. A file is deleted from the file system only after all of the links to it have been deleted. After you create a hard link, programs can use the link like any other file name. Note that Windows Explorer and a command prompt will show all linked files as being the same size, even though they all share the same data and do not actually use that amount of disk space.

This last bit can be confusing. Let's say you've got a folder with three duplicate files of 10MB each. After replacing the dupes with hard links, the folder size is still reported as 30MB by Windows Explorer and cmd.exe. However, the "Used space" reported by Windows Explorer for the volume will have decreased by 20MB.